A Study of Design Fixation, Its Mitigation and Perception in Engineering Design Faculty

Abstract

The bridge between engineering design and cognitive science research is critical to understand the effectiveness of design methods as implemented by human designers. The study reported in this paper evaluates the effects of design fixation in a group of engineering design faculty, and also provides evidence for approaches to overcome design fixation. Three conditions are compared, a control, a fixation group whom were provided with an example solution, and a defixation group whom were also given materials to mitigate their design fixation. Measures include indicators of design fixation and participant perceptions. The study demonstrates that the engineering design faculty show statistically significant evidence of design fixation, but only partially perceive its effects. This study also indicates that design fixation can be mitigated. The group of participants in this study, due to their background in engineering design research and experience with student design teams, was expected to have more accurate perceptions or awareness of design fixation than the typical participant. Understanding the incongruities between participant perceptions and quantitative design outcomes are particularly of interest to researchers of design methods. For this study, clear evidence exists that designers, even those that study and teach design on a regular basis, do not know when they are being influenced or fixated by misleading or poor information.

A study on the role of physical models in the mitigation of design fixation

“…In the very first study on design fixation, Jansson and Smith (1991) show that designers replicate the features of examples in their solutions, including the features that are undesirable for the problem in hand. The same result has been replicated by many similar studies (Purcell and Gero 1992, 1996, Chrysikou and Weisberg 2005, Cardoso, Badke-Schaub et al 2009, Linsey et al 2010, Cardoso and Badke-Schaub 2011, in various experimental conditions.…”

“…When designers fixate, they reproduce features from familiar or presented examples (Jansson and Smith 1991, Purcell and Gero 1992, Purcell and Gero 1996, Dahl and Moreau 2002, Linsey, Tseng et al 2010, Youmans 2011. Design fixation restricts the solution space where designers look for their ideas, therefore hindering the generation of novel ideas.…”

“…Linsey et al (2010) show that a set of materials, including a list of analogies, back-of-the envelope calculations and a list of alternate energy sources, help design faculty in mitigating their fixation. Meanwhile, they do not determine which of the materials reduces design fixation.…”

Examining design fixation in engineering idea generation: the role of example modality

“…This experiment was designed based upon the prior experiments by the authors (Linsey et al, 2010;. Participants generated ideas to solve a design problem in four different groups: No Example (Control) Group, the average age of the participants was 23.…”

“…Secondly, in addition to investigating the effect of physical models of examples on design fixation, this study also compares the extent of fixation caused by pictorial and by physical representations of the same example. In addition, any potential effects of defixation materials proposed by Linsey et al (2010) on the group of participants receiving the physical example are also investigated.…”